(RepublicanNews.org) – Just before the New Year, Americans were hit with another shocking piece of news about the 2024 presidential election: following in the footsteps of Colorado, the state of Maine announced that it will also disqualify former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s GOP primary election ballot.
On Thursday, December 28th, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump’s petition to appear on the state’s primary ballot is “invalid” due to violating the insurrection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which was the same justification used in the Colorado ruling.
Bellows claims that Trump’s conduct on January 6th, 2021, led to his supporters rioting at the U.S. Capitol building in a supposed attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results, marking President Joe Biden as the winner. Amid several challenges to Trump’s candidacy, Bellows also rejected a bid by the former president’s team to make her recuse herself from ruling on Trump’s eligibility.
After the Colorado ruling to kick Trump off of their ballot, which was temporarily halted the same day of the Maine ruling, multiple Fourteenth Amendment cases were raised in a few other states. While some have been dismissed, some are still pending. Most of these challenges are based on the same section in the Fourteenth Amendment: Section 3, which was implemented after the Civil War to stop former government officials from returning to office if they were members of the Confederacy.
In a filing to the Supreme Court, Colorado Republicans said that their state “interfered in the primary election by unreasonably restricting” the ability of their party “to select its candidates.” The Colorado GOP said the ruling to disqualify Trump is “based on a subjective claim of insurrection” that the state doesn’t have the “constitutional authority to make.”
The attempt by the former president’s attorneys to make Bellows recuse herself was based on social media posts his legal team claimed to demonstrate that the state secretary is biased against Trump. Bellows denied the recusal request, which she called “untimely.” She insisted her decision was “based exclusively on the record” before her and not on her “political affiliation or personal views” about what happened on Jan. 6th, 2021.
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